Hi, I’ve got a bike with dish/alignment issues in both wheels.
I just replaced the front tire in the wrong direction, leading me to flip the wheel over to correct tire direction (lazy ik)
This ruined bike steering alignment. Flipping the wheel back over fixed alignment.
Then I realized: one wheel is dished left, and the other wheel dished right (see pics, I marked each side as green/blue for perspective)
Is this the expected behavior for poorly dished wheels? They ride straight when dished opposite each other, and poor alignment when the improper dish direction is aligned? Is it worth properly dishing, or would I risk screwing up alignment further if one is dished better than the other? (never tried dishing before just small truing adjustments)
Thanks for any insight
by exeter_southend
3 Comments
You can fix it at home using your bike’s fork as truing stand. use spoke wrench and just tighten the other side where it’s dished inwards (if you think the wheel’s overall spoke tension is high enough already, then loosen the outward side instead) and then adjust the overall true. it might take time to get it to perfection but you will eventually get there.
Just out of curiosity… When you reattached the wheel presumably through quick release, you had the bike in the ground, ie. Not upside down, not on a stand?
Are spokes all tight?
Did you actually measure the error? If it’s like 1 mm, I doubt it makes a noticeable difference in handling.
Also, with road tires it really makes no difference which way the tire is mounted. Some tires do have a direction marker on the sidewall, but you can safely ignore it. These tires are slick for all practical purposes.
But if you have made truing adjustments before, then doing the dishing adjustment is fairly simple. You would just tighten all spokes on the side towards which you want to move the rim. I would do 1/4 turn at a time, and repeat as many times as necessary. Once done, correct any truing errors that may have appeared.